Heartwood
by Renee2939
Summary: Set post NFA. The surest way to destroy any creature is to kill the heart.


Heartwood 

BtVS, Ats

A/N: Apologies to all for any grammatical errors or just plain wrongness. Un-beteaed.  
Disclaimer: Not Mine. Not gonna be mine. Not making a profit here either.

The surest way to destroy anything is to kill the heart. Male or female, human or other, destroy the heart and you destroy the creature. The heart is not just an organ, one in a collection of many; it pumps life to every part, every cell. Even trees have a heart. Surface wounds can heal but damage the heartwood and the tree will rot from the inside out. It will still stand tall and seemingly sure. Its roots will still anchor it to the earth but its leaves will brown and fall and the branches will become brittle and crack. It will become hollow, a mockery of what once was. It will be a dead thing that just hasn't realized it should fall over.

He sometimes wonders if he should just fall over.

From the moment he first saw her, he knew she would be his next conquest. He had never failed to capture something that he wanted and he wanted her. It was only later that he learned just who the beautiful blonde was and that only hardened his resolve, among other things. He spent his considerable time and resources wooing her. Nothing was too much. He spent hours making sure that every detail of her seduction was perfect. Perfect exotic flowers delivered to her apartamento, perfect moonlit nights spent strolling along the winding strata of his beloved citta, perfectly presented meals at his favorite ristorante. All to no avail.

She liked him, so she said. She enjoyed his company. He knew she was attracted to him. He had seen the looks she slid him from the corners of her eyes. He had caught the faint flush of her skin when he leaned in to help her with her wrap. She knew his reputation and told him straight out that she 'would not be another notch on his bedpost.' It only made the chase that much more exciting.

He would be the first to say that he was an esteta- a playboy. He loved women, all women. There was something exquisite and beautiful about each one, like snowflakes. The thing about snowflakes though, try to hold them in your hands and they would melt. They became water, molding themselves against his hands. They never stayed the pure unique beauty that had attracted him in the first place. He was searching, even if he didn't admit it to himself, for the one woman who wouldn't melt in his keeping. The one woman who could be his equal.

The more he knew of her, the more obsessed he became. She started to fill his world until his eyes only saw her. Her hair shining in the sunlight. Her voice in his ears. The way her lips looked after her small pink tongue had wetted them. Her body moving and turning when they danced. His men all noticed it and commented on it. They thought that he didn't hear them. It wasn't that. He just didn't care. He had never been as wrapped up in a woman as he was in her.

Her way of speaking fascinated him. Her thought processes often left him reeling. People were often deceived upon first meeting her, himself included. They saw a beautiful woman with a blinding smile and not much else. He liked to think that only he saw the intelligence hiding behind her eyes; only he saw the secrets she held wrapped around her.

He had known that she would be passionate. He could see it seething under her skin. He tried everything to coax her into his bed. Nothing worked. He knew she was seeing no other man. He had made sure of it. Any man who approached her did so at his own peril. He knew she had lovers in her past. How could she not? She was a woman and not an untried bambina. She would know how brightly need could make you burn, like fire. She was an ember that only needed a breath in the right spot to flare into a raging inferno. And he would be the one to see that she burned hot and bright.

The first time she came into his palazzo, he had watched in amusement as she openly wondered at the splendor. He had made sure that everything was polished and shown to its best advantage. Himself included. He watched her turn in the foyer and stare above at the frescos on the ceiling. He knew that she belonged here, surrounded by objects as beautiful as she was. Works of art painted by masters of their crafts adorned his home, as would she. Eventually. Even if only for a time. Until he had learned everything about her; until he grew bored as he always did.

She had responsibilities. He told her he only wanted to make her happy. He would carry some of her burdens if she would let him. He admired her devotion to her sister and to her friends. He could have done without the one-eyed ragazzo though. He had seen how the boy watched her. How careful they all were with her. Something had hurt her badly in the not too distant past. Her pain excited him. It drew up protective feelings within him that had been long dormant. Oh, he knew she could take care of herself though he had never seen her work. She was as careful as he was to separate business from pleasure. She was definitely a pleasure.

Her first night in his bed had proved that his instincts still served him well. It had taken so long to lure her there and he was not disappointed. She was more than he had ever dreamed. She did not just burn, she incinerated. She consumed. He hadn't thought it was possible for a mortal woman to burn so brightly. She reduced even one such as he to exhausted bliss.

It was not long after that she told him of her past. Much of this he had already known. He had contacts everywhere and was not above using them if it would help to win her. He knew so much already but hearing it from her own lips had given him a special thrill. She was coming to trust him and that had affected him more than it should have. He felt as if he had been given a gift. A piece of herself that she did not give to many.

It was with feigned surprise that he had heard her tell of her involvement with Angelus and his brash grandchild William. He had chuckled to himself, knowing that he had taken something of theirs again. He had wondered if they would hear of it, and then he had made sure that they did. His plan worked magnificently. He had listened to his men describe the vampiris' anger and frustration and it amused him to no end.

He had been secure in the knowledge that he had tamed her where others had not. He was wrong. So unbelievably wrong.

He never found out who had told her. If he had, they would have had a slow, lingering death. She had called him crying and he had pretended to be sympathetic. In truth, he was relieved that there were no more obstacles to her heart. He was now free to take all of her. She would be completely his. The importance of that to him had been brushed aside as nothing worth noting.

He had not been unduly concerned when the first reports came in. A good shaking up had never hurt his business before. His men would just have to be more alert. It wasn't until his whole northern smuggling route had been decimated that he had taken notice of her activities. His contacts were complaining and his profits were suffering. He had thought that she was taking time to mourn with her family and friends. Instead she had been hunting every night. Nothing non-human in the city was safe from her. She was a cleansing wind and she blew through every strata.

He had tried to help her (and himself), to distract her from the pain and the hunt. They would go away. Anywhere in the whole world she wanted to go, he would take her. He had not expected to spend one of his rare vacations in the City of Angels. He had not enjoyed it and neither had she. Neither found what they were looking for.

When they came back, there was something different about her. Something unsettling. She was being consumed by something he could not name. There was now a predatory feeling in her walk. Her stare was too focused and shadows reflected from behind her eyes. Her skin grew pale from spending so much time stalking the night. She rarely ventured into the light. She now glowed like moonlight instead of like the sun. The curves she had acquired from eating the rich foods of his homeland soon gave way to the whipcord thinness that he had seen when she had first come to these shores. He had never seen her like this. He had never seen any woman like this. She was bella morte and he had thought only he could touch her without dying.

It had given him perverse pride to explain to his colleagues that he could do nothing. If they wished to do something about her they were welcome to try but he did not control her and he could not stop her. Never had he been so proud of a fact such as that. He had found a woman that would never bend to him, never break for him, never melt into him. She would be his equal or his niente affatto- his nothing at all.

When she finally returned to his bed, she was different there, too. She was a woman possessed and she would break him if she could. No longer did she wish to hear his terms of endearment: cara mia, inamorata, bella, ciccina. She would, in fact, punish him for them. And such rapture her punishment brought. He wondered if she knew; if she had once been punished this way. Every movement of her tightly coiled body warned of danger. Her heavy lidded eyes promised drawn blood. Her lightest caress was a death blow. Her small tortures only heightened his need for her.

How could one small woman turn his well ordered life into such deliciously painful chaos? He realized now that he would never know her completely. She was quicksilver, changing even as he watched. She would never bore him and he would never really have her. How could he possibly be enjoying himself so much when everything that he had thought he knew was crumbling before him? He had forgotten that a snowflake is rain that has gotten so cold as to freeze and that fire burns you if you touch it. He wondered if her past lovers had felt this way. Did she destroy them also? Did she consume them from within until they were hollow without her to fill them?

William had already been dead to her and she had already shed most of her grief for him. His second death lacked the shocking, tearing bite of the first. It was only the seeming betrayal that pained her now. She did not understand. He could have explained it to her if she had asked but she did not talk about William with him.

She could never have had Angelus but it used to be enough for her to know that he was out there somewhere in the world. That if she wished she could see him, hear his voice. No matter what words her lips shaped, her heart had not given up the dream that they would one day find a way to be together. She did not talk about Angelus with anyone at all.

The pain of losing them had undone her as nothing he had ever seen. She slipped farther from him every day and he could not help running after. They called him the Immortal but he was dying a little each night spent in her embrace. Bella morte indeed. The heartwood had been irreparably damaged and he and she, both, were rotting from the inside out.


End file.
